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Research on presidential distributive politics focuses almost exclusively on federal domestic spending. Yet, presidential influence on public policy extends well-beyond grant allocation. Since the early 20th Century, for example, the president has had substantial discretion to adjust tariff schedules and non-tariff barriers “with the stroke of a pen.” These trade adjustments via presidential directive allow us to test the logic of presidential particularism in an area of policy understudied among presidency scholars. We examine unilateral adjustments to US trade policies between 1917 and 2006, with a detailed analysis of those made between 1986 and 2006, and find that presidents—in accordance with electoral incentives—strategically allocate trade protections to industries in politically valuable states. In general, states in which the president lacks a comfortable electoral majority are systematically more likely to receive protectionist unilateral orders. Overall, our results show that the president’s distributive imperative extends into the realm of foreign affairs, an arena in which the president has substantial authority to influence public policy.

Do natural disasters help or hurt politicians’ electoral fortunes? Research on this question has produced conflicting results. Achen and Bartels (2002, 2016) find that voters punish incumbent politicians indiscriminately after such disasters. Other studies find that voters incorporate the quality of relief efforts by elected officials. We argue that results in this literature may be driven, in part, by a focus on contemporary cases of disaster and relief. In contrast, we study a case of catastrophic flooding in the American South in 1927, in which disaster aid was broadly and fairly distributed and Herbert Hoover (the 1928 Republican presidential candidate) was personally responsible for overseeing the relief efforts. Despite the distribution of unprecedented levels of disaster aid, we find that voters punished Hoover at the polls: in affected counties, Hoover’s vote share decreased by more than 10 percentage points. Our results are robust to the use of synthetic control methods and suggest that—even if voters distinguish between low- and high-quality responses—the aggregate effect of this disaster remains broadly negative. Our findings provide some support for Achen and Bartels’ idea of blind retrospection, but also generate questions about the precise mechanisms by which damage and relief affect vote choice.

Congress is frequently said to be 'broken', 'dysfunctional', and 'weak', but how does the contemporary Congress really work? Does Congress have the capacity to solve major policy problems? Can it check an aggrandizing executive, oversee a powerful Federal Reserve, and represent the American people? Can Congress cope with vast changes in the American political economy, including rising income inequality? Congress and Policy Making in the 21st Century takes a fresh look at the performance of Congress in the domestic arena, focusing on issues such as immigration, health care, and the repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'. With original contributions from leading scholars, this important volume examines how Congress tackles - and fails to tackle - key policy challenges in an era of growing social diversity and ideological polarization. Rich in analysis and illuminating detail, the book reveals the full complexity of the institution at work.

In 2009, the U.S. Congress, led by House Democrats, sought to tackle the issue of climate change and pass major energy legislation. The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Sen. Edward Markey (D-CA), proposed a “cap and trade” system to limit the amount of greenhouse gases that companies could emit nationally. “Emission permits” would be bought and sold in a marketplace, and the cap would be reduced over time to curb carbon dioxide gases. The ambitious bill generated significant controversy. Environmental groups lobbied for the measure while the petroleum and natural gas industries and conservative advocacy groups sought to block its passage. The bill passed in the House by a slim 219–212 vote, with just 8 Republicans in support. But, the following year, ACES died in the Senate, when Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) acknowledged that he did not have the sixty votes necessary to overcome a Republican-led filibuster.

Since 2010, President Obama has been urging the Congress to pass climate change legislation. But little has been accomplished congressionally, with meaningful policy change made more difficult since the Republicans regained majority control of the House in 2011. In his 2013 State of the Union address, Obama announced that he was prepared to move forward without legislative action. “If Congress won't act soon to protect future generations, I will,” he said (Restuccia and Dixon 2013). Working through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Obama in 2014 established a new regulation that would cut carbon emissions produced by coal-burning power plants by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. Congressional Republicans were immediately up in arms about the executive “overreach” and warned of significant job losses in the coal industry. Obama made no apologies for seizing the initiative, however, and castigated Congress for failing to tackle climate change. And, in June 2014, the Supreme Court largely upheld the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases, though the decision also left open the possibility of future judicial review of rules imposing limits on power plant emissions.

On combating carbon pollution, then, national policy making in the 21st Century is being led primarily by the president with significant input from the judiciary. Individual lawmakers have certainly taken positions and made public statements, but Congress is not a central institutional player in climate-change-mitigation policy making.

Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Republican Party dominated American elections in all geographical areas except the former Confederacy, which remained solidly Democratic. Despite this, Southern states were consistently provided with a sizable delegation to the Republican National Convention (as much as 26 percent of the total). This raises the question: Why would a region that delivered no votes on Election Day be given a substantial say in the selection of the party's presidential candidate? Previous research on the role Southern delegates played in Republican conventions has been limited to individual cases or to studies only tangentially related to this question. We explore the continuous and sizable presence of Southern delegates at Republican conventions by conducting a historical overview of the 1880–1928 period. We find that Republican Party leaders—and particularly presidents—adopted a “Southern strategy” by investing heavily in maintaining a minor party organization in the South, as a way to create a reliable voting base at conventions. We also show that as the Republican Party's strength across the country grew under the “System of 1896,” challenges to the delegate apportionment method—and thereby efforts to minimize Southern influence at Republican conventions—increased substantially.

The Politics of Major Policy Reform in Postwar America examines the politics of recent landmark policy in areas such as homeland security, civil rights, health care, immigration and trade, and it does so within a broad theoretical and historical context. By considering the politics of major programmatic reforms in the United States since the Second World War - specifically, courses of action aimed at dealing with perceived public problems - a group of distinguished scholars sheds light not only on significant efforts to ameliorate widely recognized ills in domestic and foreign affairs but also on systemic developments in American politics and government. In sum, this volume provides a comprehensive understanding of how major policy breakthroughs are achieved, stifled, or compromised in a political system conventionally understood as resistant to major change.